A Nobel Physicist Explained How to Cook Pasta And Now Everybody's Angry
www.sciencealert.com
Italians are notoriously – and understandably – protective of their cuisine, as regular arguments about the correct toppings for pizza or the appropriate pasta to use with a Bolognese ragu will attest.

Oddly, I hadn’t put much thought into the energy costs of cooking pasta before…

This article estimates the UK spends £4,690,000 per week on it! And suggests possibly greener ways of cooking it. It’s a small amount per person, but there’s a lot of people (I hope) making pasta!

  • pingveno
    4·
    2 years ago

    On the other hand, highly optimizing your pasta cooking for energy consumption is kind of a misuse of time. Going vegan or picking locally sourced in season foods is going to be far more impactful. Still a neat intellectual exercise, though.

    • Stoned_Ape
      1·
      2 years ago

      I’m not really enjoying this argument. The way I understand it, you argue against this way of saving energy, because you personally think that another way of saving energy should be preferred. I say, let people discuss this topic and then decide for themselves.

      Also, what about a vegan who tries to save all kinds of energies? Should they not do that for some reason? I kinda get the feeling that you think that vegans shouldn’t be doing any more, because they are doing enough. Is that how you see it? If not, sorry, then I misunderstood you.

      • pingveno
        2·
        2 years ago

        Sorry, I was maybe too harsh there. I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing to talk about. But I have observed with environmentalism a tendency to focus too much on changes that are of marginal consequence at the expense of changes that are more impactful. After all, we all have a limited amount of time and energy to devote.

        Edit: To demonstrate, boiling 1 liter of water in an electric kettle emits 70g of carbon according to one person on the Internet (I’ll assume that’s generally true). In contrast, a flight produces 101g per km per passenger. Taking just one flight per year would dwarf any amount of spaghetti someone could eat.